Nina Wright - Whiskey with a Twist

“Excellent!” MacArthur declared.

“That’s not fair,” I said. “Chester wasn’t even here when it happened. He got that answer from somebody inside!”

The eight-year-old adjusted his deputy badge and stood as tall as possible. “Whoever perpetrated this double crime is somebody close to the victims. Somebody participating in the show.”

“You always hurt the ones you love,” Jeb chimed in, gazing at me.

“Or hate,” I said.

We were about to adjourn to the concession area for the remainder of our strategy session when we heard what sounded like cries of frustration and calls for help. Female voices were coming from the cornfield. MacArthur, followed by Jeb and Chester, sprinted toward the wall of stalks.

“It’s only the Two L’s!” I reminded them, implying that the lost souls weren’t worthy of rescue.

“Keep shouting! We’ll talk you in!” MacArthur informed the stranded handlers.

“I’m over here!” Lauren or Lindsey cried out.

“And I’m here! Right here!” the other L shouted.

A dog or two barked, also. The women had found their hounds but lost each other, as well as their way back. MacArthur, Jeb and Chester enthusiastically called them in as I leaned against the building and observed. It made for a fascinating study in male ego-fluffing. Even one as young as Chester swelled with importance and pride at the prospect of rescuing damsels in distress.

I reflected on my own brushes with danger and wanted to call out to the Two L’s that I’d stared down the barrel of a gun. They were scared of corn rows! Proof that upper-class chicks are wimps.

When the Two L’s emerged from the field, their ash blonde hair and dark suits were dusted with yellow-brown flakes and tendrils. So were their hounds.

“It’s a jungle in there!” Lauren said.

Ever the job-conscious handler, she whipped out a pin brush and immediately set to work on her bitch. Lindsey did likewise. The guys waited for acknowledgment of their manly achievement. As if being loud and obnoxious wasn’t something boys enjoyed, anyway. But the Two L’s were too refined to thank the little people, and I’m not referring only to Chester.

Seeing the handlers expertly wield those brushes brought a question to mind.

“Excuse me,” I said, approaching Lindsey. “I’m wondering if you can tell me which is more common: for one of those pin bristles to stick in a hound’s coat after grooming or to the groomer’s own clothes?”

“No professional would leave debris in her hound’s coat. Nor would she fail to brush off her own clothing before entering the ring.”

“Of course,” I said, backpedaling. “But how about someone who wasn’t a professional. Could they make a mistake like that?”

“Kori Davies does it all the time,” Lauren sniped. “She’s a loser.”

“She won her round this morning,” I pointed out.

“Even a broken clock is right twice a day,” said Lindsey.

Both handlers turned their attention back to their hounds. I could tell that the guys and I had blinked out of their consciousness like stars in the dawn sky. But MacArthur’s somber face told me he got the point: If the pin brush bristle he’d found by the side door was a clue at all, it wouldn’t lead us to a canine professional. More like a hired gun. Or Kori.

While we were occupied with the Two L’s, a swarm of patrol cars arrived at the Barnyard Inn. Two murders in two days had to be bad for Amish Country tourism.

According to the food concessionaire, the first officers on the scene had ordered a lockdown of the exhibit hall only to discover that a third of the show’s participants had already scattered. Detectives and forensics team members were doing the best they could to analyze a “compromised” crime scene.

“At least Afghan hounds are quiet,” the concessionaire remarked. “If this had happened last week, during the Bassett hound specialty, you wouldn’t be able to hear yourself think.”

I nodded. Except we all knew this would never happen around Basset hounds.

Over cola and nachos for Chester, Jeb, and MacArthur-and ginger ale for me-MacArthur laid out his strategy. He and Jeb would track down every breeder or handler “of interest” and ask where he or she had been, and whom he or she had seen, around the time of all three shootings: Mitchell’s, Ramona’s, and Matt’s.

I pointed out the flaw in that plan: “Some breeders or handlers-like, oh, say, Kori, for instance-are already gone.”

MacArthur said, “Nobody saw Kori go. I’m sending Jeb to her room.”

At least he was willing to solicit a second opinion instead of asking us to rely solely on his. Let’s say Kori was still there. Even if she was a superb kisser, I knew Jeb wouldn’t fall under her spell. He liked his women slender and feminine. Like Susan.

Which reminded me.… “Who’s going to interview the Breeder Education Committee? And it can’t be Jeb.”

As I glared at my ex, both MacArthur and Chester volunteered for the job.

“Back to the power issue,” MacArthur said. “The electrical outage, that is. Here’s how I plan to investigate.” He pointed to the female sheriff’s deputy I had met last night, now getting a complimentary cup of coffee from the concession stand. “Whiskey, go ask her what happened.”

So I did. And it was almost that simple although the cop seemed slightly wary. Maybe because of my questions, maybe because I’d been near two different men who were shot to death. After asking me a few dozen questions of her own, the deputy told me what she knew about the power outage.

“Somebody pulled the plug.”

I waited for the rest of the story, but that was essentially it.

“This place must have been wired by somebody’s nephew,” the deputy said. “It’s not even close to being up to code. Anybody who could follow a line could find their way to the circuit box and cut the power with a couple flicks of their wrist. I’m going to bust the building inspector.”

She was sufficiently P.O.’d at that township official to show me the inferior set-up. Even I, whose knowledge of electricity was limited to flipping a wall switch, could see that this didn’t look right. A mare’s nest of heavy black cables fed into stacks of industrial-sized power strips under an outdated circuit box.

“So the only thing someone had to know was the location of the power source,” I mused.

The deputy nodded. “And to do that, all he’d have to do is follow the black cables.”

She was right. I’d been so preoccupied with hounds and shootings that I hadn’t noticed the obvious electrical lines crisscrossing the arena floor. The only area free of floor cables was the show ring.

Back at the concession stand, there was no sign of either Jeb or MacArthur. Chester was still there, deep in conversation with the middle-aged female food vendor, who had joined him at our table. That is, Chester was talking to her when he wasn’t licking a perilously tall soft ice cream cone.

“Look, Whiskey. I got a quadruple dip. On the house!”

I thanked the vendor for her generosity and asked Chester to follow me. He withdrew a folded bill from his inside blazer pocket and pressed it into the vendor’s palm, a gesture better suited to the senior member of a men’s club than a third-grader. The vendor glanced at the bill, gasped, and tried to return it. But Chester waved her away.

“You can afford to pay for your cone,” I told him a little peevishly.

“I know.” He slurped melted ice cream from the back of his hand. “But I’d rather let people give me things when they want to and then over-tip them to the point where they practically faint.”